Outside King's Landing

Jaime disliked the Tyrells. Years earlier, his father Tywin Lannister had once considered marrying Jaime's sister Cersei into Highgarden. The idea had died before anything came of it, but Jaime remained displeased with House Tyrell.

On top of that, he had been assigned to receive the Tyrell party. He had heard of Garlan's arrival in the kingswood, calculated the time, and come to this abandoned camp at the forest's edge to wait for them. Instead, the Tyrell column was several days late, forcing him to suffer here for nothing. The moment they met, he could not resist making things difficult for Garlan and venting some of his resentment.

"I am ten this year," Garlan said, untouched by the Kingslayer's provocation. He smiled at Jaime Lannister. "I wonder what Ser Jaime was like at ten?"

Jaime fell silent for a moment. In truth, he already thought rather well of Garlan. At only ten, the boy had led a party all the way from Highgarden to King's Landing, and that kind of leadership was not something ordinary people possessed. Jaime had certainly not been capable of it at ten.

He acknowledged Garlan's ability in his heart, but he did not show it. He merely smiled, avoided answering, and changed the subject with some stiffness. "Why did your house send you to King's Landing instead of your elder brother Willas Tyrell? Do the Tyrells look down so much on the tourney His Grace Robert is holding for the birth of his firstborn son? Or are you dissatisfied with His Grace's heir?"

"Ser Jaime, you seem to have forgotten something. My father, Lord Mace Tyrell, is in King's Landing now. Is my elder brother more important than my father?" Garlan handled Jaime's attempt to put a dangerous accusation on him with ease. "If House Tyrell were dissatisfied with His Grace's heir, I imagine my father would already be in Highgarden, not remaining in King's Landing."

When his provocation failed, Jaime did not continue. He returned to the matter at hand. "By His Grace Robert's command, I am here to welcome House Tyrell's party. Follow me to the camp prepared for you."

With that, he tugged his reins and turned toward King's Landing. As he passed the scouts, he glanced again at Alden, the Tyrell man who had shown him neither contempt nor disdain.

At first, Jaime did not think there was anything special about him. Then he saw Glory, the albino shadowcat at Alden's feet, and surprise flickered across his face. Curiosity stirred, but he knew this was neither the place nor the time to satisfy it. He quickly withdrew his gaze and, according to the king's command, led the Tyrell party toward its camp.

Under the Kingslayer's lead, the two hundred-man companies moved one behind the other along the kingsroad. Caravans passing in either direction saw the banners and withdrew to the sides of the road on their own, waiting until the columns had gone by before moving again.

Although the war had ended several years before, its influence had not vanished. Its damage to trade, in particular, continued to weigh heavily.

During the rebellion, not every Targaryen force had been destroyed. Most of the survivors surrendered after Prince Rhaegar died, but some were still commanded by knights loyal to House Targaryen and had no intention of yielding.

They understood that their strength could not reverse the outcome. All they could do was flee somewhere safe and plan from there.

At the time, they had few routes of escape. In fact, they had only one: south.

The North, the riverlands, the Vale, and the westerlands were all enemy territory. Only the Tyrells in the Reach and Dorne farther south still stood with the dragons then. So those last loyalists led the remnants of their forces across the Blackwater Rush and withdrew southward.

Before they could even leave the kingswood, however, both House Tyrell and House Martell publicly declared support for Robert Baratheon's claim to the Iron Throne, abandoning the failed dragon cause completely.

What truly drove those remnants to despair was that the new King Robert immediately issued warrants for every Targaryen loyalist. The lands and property of lords and landed knights among them were confiscated, cutting off their way home altogether.

At the same time, Lord Mace Tyrell, eager to show loyalty to the new king, soothe the conflicts left by the rebellion, and dispel royal suspicion, ordered every noble house in the Reach to hunt down the remaining dragon loyalists. That order trapped the remnants in the Reach and forced them into becoming brigands and outlaws.

When the Queen of Thorns heard of it at Highgarden, she was so furious that she smashed her favorite porcelain vase from the far east. She understood exactly how much harm and instability her son's command would bring the Reach. It might even shake House Tyrell's rule there.

But stopping it was already impossible. Lord Mace Tyrell had issued the order publicly. If she opposed it, the new king would surely see it as support for the dragons, and the rebel army that had not yet dispersed would march south and flatten House Tyrell.

The only thing she could do was order Lord Mace Tyrell to remain in King's Landing and not return to Highgarden, lest he come back and make some foolish decision that turned the matter worse. The excuse was simple enough: he would stay in the capital to mend relations with the Iron Throne.

For the next few years, the Reach developed exactly as the Queen of Thorns had foreseen. Bandits roamed everywhere and outlaw bands acted freely. The Red Lake Forest outlaws Alden had helped destroy were only one example. Many more groups formed from former dragon loyalists occupied the plains, hills, and mountains between Highgarden and King's Landing.

Trade across the Reach suffered heavily because of it. Traveling as a merchant there had become too dangerous. Robbery could come at any time. Without caravans, commerce in the Reach's towns stalled, and every lord suffered serious losses. Complaints against House Tyrell spread everywhere.

Those Reach nobles who had never been content with House Tyrell holding Highgarden and the title of Warden of the South grew restless again and began challenging Tyrell authority. The split within House Crane was only a small episode in that wider unrest.

Since then, the lords of the Reach had all tried to destroy the outlaws and restore some trade, but compared with the scale of commerce before the rebellion, the recovery was insignificant.

On the road here, the Tyrell party had met only a handful of caravans. That was on the Roseroad, where lordly cavalry patrols moved back and forth often enough for caravans with their own guards to risk the journey. Merchants who could not hire sufficient protection did not even consider taking the road.

The difference between south and north became even more obvious when the Tyrell column crossed the Blackwater bridge. South of the bridge, the road was overgrown and the waystations nearly abandoned. North of it, caravans gathered thickly, and the warehouses were packed full. Some goods were even piled on the grass outside. All of them were bound for the westerlands, the riverlands, the Vale, and other northern regions.

Seeing that prosperity, Garlan sighed. His head ached a little when he thought of his father, who so often made muddled decisions.

This journey to King's Landing should originally have been led by his brother Willas Tyrell, but his grandmother, the Queen of Thorns, had stopped that and sent ten-year-old Garlan north instead. Willas remained at Highgarden to help her handle affairs. Clearly, his sharp-tongued grandmother believed that if her son had grown crooked, she would simply raise another grandson properly and replace him.

Careful as he was, Garlan soon noticed something wrong in the crowd after adjusting his mood. It was not the wrongness of danger or assassination, but of the way people looked at them.

Ordinarily, commoners seeing a column of nearly three hundred men would be afraid. They would lower their heads and keep far away. Now the smallfolk of King's Landing gathered by the roadside and stared, hatred and contempt in every pair of eyes.

Garlan quickly realized they were not looking at the Tyrells. They were looking at the gold cloaks ahead, or more precisely at the Kingslayer riding high-headed on his warhorse.

Then Garlan remembered what he had read about the rebellion. The people of King's Landing hated and despised the Kingslayer not only because he had murdered the mad king he served, but also because his name was Lannister. At the war's end, Lord Tywin Lannister had led his army in the sack of King's Landing. Countless people of the city had died at the hands of westermen. In the end, that hatred settled on Jaime, the most dazzling Lannister left in their sight.

For a moment, Garlan felt a little sympathy for Jaime Lannister. He even admired the Kingslayer's will. If he were in Jaime's place, he did not think he could ignore such malice pressing on him every hour of every day. Madness would only be a matter of time.

While Garlan analyzed the current situation in King's Landing by observing the surroundings, using methods he had learned from the Queen of Thorns, Alden looked around with the rest of the party, curious about the city.

Most of the Tyrell men had never left Highgarden. They had long heard of King's Landing, the most famous city in the Seven Kingdoms, and before coming they had all prepared themselves to behold its splendor.

But after crossing the Blackwater bridge, passing the waystation district, and reaching the outskirts of King's Landing, the corner of the city before them left them disappointed. The high walls should have carried a strong sense of pressure, yet the damage scattered across them made the walls look as though they might collapse at any moment. Worse, those scars did not come from siege engines. They were all the natural wounds of age and neglect.

The city's people were just as disappointing as its walls. They were dressed in rags, like refugees from elsewhere, and carried none of the bearing one imagined from residents of the capital of the Seven Kingdoms.

They soon learned that their judgment was not wrong. Most of the people they saw along the road truly were refugees. After the war ended, they should have returned to their homes, but local lords had seized their fields when they fled. Going back meant death, so they could only remain in King's Landing and scrape out a living.

The flood of refugees had already exceeded what King's Landing could bear. Lord Tywin's westermen had emptied large parts of the city during the sack, but the refugees pouring in filled the vacancies left by the dead almost at once. Later arrivals could not enter the city to live, so they built shacks and tents along the roads outside the walls.

In the years since, from the Mud Gate to the Iron Gate, more than half the city wall was ringed by refugee shacks and tents. Around each gate, new districts had formed on their own.

Such a massive inflow of people naturally brought every kind of problem. Theft and robbery were nearly everywhere, and gangs large and small had sprung up throughout the districts. For Alden at the moment, however, the trouble these refugees brought him was only one thing: filth.

Streets running with piss and shit were torture for him. Fortunately, before crossing the Blackwater bridge, he had put Glory into the special pouch at his chest to avoid drawing attention. Otherwise he would have had to face the little shadowcat rubbing filth all over him.

Thankfully, this stretch of road was not especially long. When they reached the King's Gate, they turned and followed the edge of the tourney grounds west toward Lion Hill.

Lion Hill stood northwest of the tourney field, close to the Lion Gate. It offered the best view around the grounds. From the hilltop, one could look down over the field and take in everything happening there.

Several banners already flew over Lion Hill: the golden lion of House Lannister, Wardens of the West; the direwolf of House Stark in the North; the crowned stag of House Baratheon in the stormlands; the falcon of House Arryn in the Vale; and the standards of several other great houses of the Seven Kingdoms.

The Tyrell rose banner was among them as well. It seemed Mace Tyrell had prepared the camp in advance, though its position was not good. It lay on the western side of Lion Hill and could not see the tourney field at all. Its placement was worse than even the Martell camp of Dorne, proof enough that the Lord of Highgarden's efforts these past years to mend relations had not accomplished much.

After the Kingslayer brought Garlan and the others to the camp entrance, he turned and left without lingering.

Garlan entered the camp and spoke briefly with the men guarding it, likely asking where his father was. Then he led Vortimer, the nobles, and the knights away for the moment, heading into King's Landing. The remaining men were assigned to their tents and given their duties for the coming days: patrols, guard shifts, and other work.

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